Prepaid
wireless is a growing and truly exciting industry. At
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information that isn't readily available anywhere else. The
content is original, and created from firsthand experience working in
the prepaid wireless industry for over a decade.

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informed. I believe in brief, to-the-point
summaries/commentary
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snippet
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Note:I
do not have any affiliation,
nor do I get paid by any of the sites that I link to below.
They
are simply topics that I deemed interesting, and provide a link for you
to learn more, and I give credit to the source by listing their name
under the title. Enjoy!

eWeek
Cricket
announced that it's now
offering its $50 plan with 8GB of data, up from
5GB. This is a very competitive plan, and gets even better
when you
signup for autopay, which earns you $5 off per month. This
plan is not only
competitive in the prepaid market, but also super competitive when
compared to postpaid plans. Note that this is stated as a
limited time
offer when you read the small print, so if you're considering Cricket,
I recommend jumping on this fast.

In addition, existing customers on
the $50 plan will need to proactively enroll in this new plan by going
to a store, calling customer care, or logging into your account online.
I
expect Cricket could make this a permanent offer if the usage metrics
look good after the trial period is completed.

Fierce Wireless
TracFone
already sells the very successful Straight Talk in Walmart, as well as
Net10, and Total Wireless (as well as TracFone of course), so this
acquisition
makes a lot of sense for them. Though I'm surprised that
T-Mobile
would let go of that business. It likely wants to focus resources on
the T-Mobile brand. However, the market has shown that
multiple brands
can prosper, and a Walmart brand is surely valuable. Anyway,
it will
be interesting to see how this brand evolves, or if TracFone will
ultimately fold it into one of its existing brands. That said,
this
decision will likely be driven by the most powerful retailer on the
planet, Walmart.

Nashville ChatterThis past month Google launched Group Plans (otherwise known
as
Family Plans) on Project Fi. It allows you to have up to 5
additional lines on one account, with the 2nd through 6th line getting
a
$5 discount. Thus, each additional line pays $15 for
unlimited
talk and text; data is still $10/GB. It will be interesting
to
see how Google evolves this program. The reality is that in
its
current state, being available only on limited Google phones, the
program really does not represent any notable threat to any carrier.

In addition,
note that other carriers already have WiFi switching built
into their phones. Project Fi is unique, however, because it
includes switching between multiple networks (T-Mobile, Sprint, US
Cellular). It's unlikely that we'll see any other carriers
offer
this capability any time soon. If Google were to get
aggressive,
it could discount its phones, and put in some marketing muscle to
attract customers. However, until customers have access to
use
Project Fi on Samsung and Apple phones, the program will remain quite
niche in my opinion.

Market Realist
You've seen reported this site for years that Verizon remains
completely out
touch with the prepaid market. Their subscriber results
continue
to demonstrate a decline. Despite making recent tweaks to
their
prepaid plans, they continue to win the "pathetic prepaid provider"
award. Now that AT&T has moved into the first
position ahead
of Verizon as the largest carrier in the U.S., and other carriers
continue to be aggressive, Verizon will need to make some moves.

It will be interesting to see how their postpaid figures look,
though are clearly going to come in looking much better than their
prepaid
performance (obviously). We always knew that they would have
to
see real revenue impacting declines before making any significant moves
in the prepaid space.

Financial
Post
Following Rogers' acquisition of prepaid competitor Mobilicity, they're
changing the data roaming rate from $1.50/MB to $6/MB (~$6K/GB).
The is stating that this is due to IT system migration and
business limitations. I'd be interested in understanding this
in
greater detail, as I can't understand why roaming partners and their
fees would be impacted by this migration, and price plan changes are
usually table changes on the backend. That said, these types
of
platforms really are rocket science, so I can actually appreciate, as
lame as it is, that there may be limitations that are resulting in this
increased cost.

That said, very few people encounter data roaming, and on prepaid
you're
not going to receive a surprise massive bill. In addition,
you
can change your phone settings to disable roaming. Thus,
avoiding
this fee is well, very avoidable, and I would describe this lawsuit as
completely
frivolous!

FierceWireless
T-Mobile announced that it is now throttling users of its smartphone
mobile hotspot feature when network traffic warrants it. This comes on
the heels of its launch of unlimited data, and helps to control network
data usage. It's actually not an unreasonable stipulation, as
it's only at times when the network is congested, as opposed to some
other carriers that throttle certain services all the time.

That said, if you live in a large city that
has marginal wireless
bandwidth, you may find that you're virtually always throttled, which
would make the service pretty much useless for you. Hopefully
T-Mobile will continue to build out its network, and this won't become
a real issue for anyone.

Comments?
Ideas? Feedback? I'd love to hear from you. Just reply to this zine and
tell me what you think!